


Nature Documentaries Are Full of Lies

by Penelopiad



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Seaside, Small Towns, Urban Fantasy, Xeno, merman!Jamie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penelopiad/pseuds/Penelopiad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drypool—Out-To-Sea's aquarium slash water park slash total failure at being any of those things—is boasting they got themselves a merman, and Tyler, well, Tyler has got to see if it's true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nature Documentaries Are Full of Lies

**Author's Note:**

> First written as a ficlet on tumblr and then expanded a little. Thanks to stars-seguin for the prompt.
> 
> Thanks also to sorrylatenew and kylezy for the SPaG/beta check on very, very short notice. I went and changed things a bit after they were done so any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.
> 
> When I came up with the name 'Out-To-Sea' for the town I had the feeling I'd seen or read that name somewhere but couldn't recall where. Turns out it's the title of a short story (as well as the name of a retirement home in the story) in Karen Russell's wonderful collection _St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves_. So total credit to her for the name.

 

 

**  
**DRYPOOL WATER PARK & AQUARIUM EXCLUSIVE!  
OUR VERY FIRST MAN OF THE SEA! YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!  
COME BE WITNESS TO THE INCREDIBLY ELUSIVE SPECIMEN FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS WEDNESDAY  
$5 adults. $3 students. Free for children under 8.  


 

 

  
~ ~ ~  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~  
~ ~ ~  


 

 

Out-To-Sea is a shit town, there’s no two ways about it.

A vacation spot that saw its heyday at least two decades ago and seems to have stopped trying to move past that point ever since.

And look, Tyler’s not just saying, okay? It’s an indisputable fact. One look at the town as you come off the highway, drive on Road 64 along the coast, past the lighthouse—all normal picturesque coastline landscape, with the sea glittering on your left—and down Out-To-Sea’s main street, and it’s just _obvious_. 

The Pelican still has its 1983 neon sign and the rooms’ decor hasn’t been updated since either. Every sea-wind battered building needs a fresh coat of paint—pink or turquoise or yellow or beige, like the colourfulness will somehow distract from all the cracks. Flamingo Fitness, with its view on the ocean, is straight out of Olivia Newton John’s _Let’s Get Physical_ video, or something. Something old. With headbands. 

Mario’s Magical Arcade used to be the worst spot to hang out, but despite a good third of its games being out of order it’s experiencing a resurgence in popularity from all the nostalgic tourists flocking in. Also there may or may not be a fairy living there now, Tyler hasn’t checked. 

The tourists are the kind that couldn’t make it to Miami and pretend Out-To-Sea is exactly where they want to be for their precious, hard-earned two weeks off work. They lay on the beach for hours, buy hot dogs at the strategically placed stands, and forget their cans of beer in the sand when they leave to go back to their crappy hotel with “vintage” wallpaper and TV-VCR combo. 

But in all of Out-To-Sea, which isn’t much, nothing’s quite as shitty as Drypool.

Back in the late 70s, the town couldn’t decide on whether it wanted a water park or an aquarium, aimed for somewhere in the middle, and kinda failed at both.

Drypool managed to survive all those years, though, even through piss poor management, seriously unsanitary water slides, and a couple of giant turtles—Loretta and Gregory—as its aquarium’s main attraction. Nothing good or interesting ever happens at Drypool no matter what the geocities-inspired website claims. 

Until now.

Now, they’re boasting they got themselves a merman and Tyler’s got to see if it’s true. 

A place in Maine has three of them doing shows every weekend, but Tyler’s never seen one in the flesh and would never have expected one would be here, of all fucking places.

He saw an episode on TV once, one of those documentaries he can’t remember the name of. He was high off Brownie’s, well, brownies at the time but he remembers they were talking about how hard to capture merpeople were. He’s pretty sure they meant capture on camera, but either way, it was all about how elusive and mysterious they are in the wild. They made it sound like they were barely real. Tyler thought the guy on TV was gonna pop a boner in his excitement. Like he couldn’t just go to an aquarium nearby to see them, but whatever. 

So they had this footage of them swimming and you couldn’t see much, but you could see enough. And Tyler remembers how beautiful they were. And also how hard he got in his shorts because Brownie gave him shit for it later. But Tyler—he’s not sure what did it, if it was the merpeople, the weed, or Marc fondling Steph’s tits as they made out in the La-Z-boy in front of him. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter. It was awesome. 

But he can’t stop thinking about the TV footage since this morning—since he found one of Drypool’s posters stuck to the side of his stand, and on every pole on the pier. It’s a loop in his mind of long, _thick_ fish tales shimmering under dark water, and pale strong limbs, powerful and graceful, pushing and gliding. And he—he’s got to know. He’s got to. 

Tyler slides through a hole in Drypool’s fence—right under one of the slides. No one has ever bothered fixing it. The belly of the slide is painted in graffiti and the air’s thick with water, smelling like mildew and rot. Normally, he’d have a pang of sympathy for the poor sob who has to clean this place up every morning from all the empty bags of chips, beer cans, and used condoms, but no one’s going to be here tonight. Monday nights are fireworks nights at the beach and everyone’s going to be there—the tourists to enjoy the shitshow they don’t yet know is coming, and the locals to laugh at it.

He’s more careful making his way to the outdoor tank in case Drypool’s hired some security guard or something to protect their shiny new acquisition, but no one yells at him to fuck off and he hears nothing besides the soft whirring of the pumps and the soft lapping of water.

Once, last year, they had a party in there while it was empty, got properly fucked up too. Now it’s all clean and re-painted and looks brand new. The underwater lamps are casting undulating watery lights over the cement sides. There’s a wood deck leading to the tank, stretching past the edge, maybe five feet above the water. Tyler thinks it’d be for some trainer, making the dolphins or seals or whatever jump, if Drypool had gotten its shit together. Well, looks like they had now.

The deck has that barely sticky feel to it of just-varnished wood left to dry in the sun, smells of it too—chemical and strong when he gets on his stomach. It hides the salty, sticky smell of the tank water mixing with the humid air. 

Tyler peers over the edge of the deck and into the water. He sees nothing.

“Hey,” he says, low, and feels fucking dumb about it. “Hey, you there?”

There’s no answer and he stares at the shifting turquoises and greens of the water for a long time, holding his breath then exhaling quick through his nose when his lungs start to burn. When his phone pings in his pocket, he turns on his back to get it out and check his message. Brownie and the boys are going to the Pelican. Fuck. _Marc says he got a sick new vid. Wanna come? Where you at?_

Tyler doesn’t answer. He stays on his back, arms spread wide to the sides. The fireworks have started and when he turns his head he can see the highest ones bursting bright in the sky over the tallest water slide. He watches them until he can’t see them anymore, then listens to the last ones explode out of sight until all’s quiet once more, only the water below him, the whirring of the pumps, and, if he holds his breath, the ocean in the distance.

“Ugh,” he says out loud. “Should have gone to the Pelican.”

“What’s the pelican?”

Tyler screams. 

He twists around so fast, he loses his grip on his phone and drops it into the tank. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

That’s when Tyler sees him, moving out of the shadowy part of the tank and toward him. 

Like, okay, it sounds weird to say but his first thought is, _holy shit he is hot as fuck_ —because hello, this is the first time he’s seen a merman, and also _it’s a merman_ —but it is what it is. As in, it’s Tyler’s first thought, and the merman’s hot as fuck.

He swims toward Tyler, fucking _gliding_ through the water and it—it makes Tyler’s stomach churn with heat. Huh. Maybe not just the weed, then. 

Tyler can’t really see the merman’s tail, it must be a similar colour to the water or something. But the merman’s upper body is huge—wide chest and shoulders and fit arms that make him wonder if there’s a weight room at the bottom of the ocean like in the cartoons. He’s got a real good face too, with big brown eyes and dark wet hair slicked back. 

Tyler doesn’t care if that makes him a weirdo—he digs it. 

“What’s the pelican?” the merman repeats, and he has a soft, low voice that feels a bit at odds with the shape of him. Or maybe he’s just shy. Tyler doesn’t think he’s the type of guy who would be intimidating to a huge merman, though.

“The Pelican?” He clears his throat, fingers curling on the edge of the deck. “It’s this hotel? And its still got these TV-VCR combos in all the rooms and this huge collection of 70s and 80s pornos, like, the people renting the rooms can ask for and me and my boys we—” He stops himself. The merman’s looking up at him, confused, head cocked to the side, but with a twitch in his cheek like he’s trying not to laugh. “—aaaand you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s cool.” He gets his right arm unstuck from under himself and sticks it out. “I’m Tyler.”

The merman looks at his hand, then back up to Tyler’s face. “I could drag you down and eat you up,” he says, baring pointy teeth, and eyes hardening as if he’s ready for a fight. 

Tyler believes him—flash of fear zinging through him—but he keeps his hand where it is. “They’ll kill you if you do that,” he says. He doesn’t mean it as a threat, but just as fact, and he holds the merman’s eyes hoping he gets it. “You shake it,” he adds, glancing at his hand and wiggling his fingers.

The merman takes a moment, more considering than fearful or angry, Tyler thinks—it’s freaky how fucking human he looks—before extending his arm out. Water slides on his skin, clings to the small webs between his fingers as he shakes Tyler’s hand. His skin is cool, but soft.

“Jamie,” he says.

“Nice to meet you, dude. Hey, could you get my phone? The thing I dropped in the water?”

Jamie nods and plunges. Tyler sees his tail better, then, lights flashing silver over bright green scales. It’s huge and thick and looks like it could kill a man with one powerful blow, but it’s swift too, as if it weighs nothing and he… also digs that. Huh.

Tyler takes his phone when Jamie hands it to him. “It’s useless now,” he says. “They’re not gonna cover the water damage, but I didn’t want people to know I was here.”

“Why?” Jamie asks. He’s holding himself out of the water with his tail, the water line just a couple inches below his waist, where skin becomes scales, and Tyler stares a little. It looks smooth and seamless and he tries not to think—not to wonder if he could feel the difference with his eyes closed. If he ran his hand over Jamie’s stomach—more like rock hard abs, okay, he’s noticed—and down, down, down if he’d feel it, where he’s not human-like anymore. 

Tyler shakes his head. “I’m just—not supposed to be here.”

“Oh.” Jamie runs a hand through his hair, water drops falling off his arms and across his cheeks. “Me neither,” he says, soft. He licks his lips and immediately makes a face, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Is it gross?” Tylers asks. “Didn’t they use seawater?” He leans in to look down, like he’ll be able to see.

“It’s _not_ the same.” There’s a growl in Jamie’s voice. It makes Tyler look up at him, at the way his face twists and his teeth bare again in all their pointiness—better to tear into flesh the guy in the documentary had said. With the lights from below and the sharp shadows they create over Jamie’s face, he’s all monster for a second and Tyler has to tamp down hard on his flight response, heart beating fast in his ribcage.

“No,” Tyler says, swallowing. “No, it wouldn’t be, would it? Sorry, man.”

Jamie’s face smoothes out fast and his eyes go wide. “You were scared.” He says it like he’s surprised, like it’s something new and strange, something he hadn’t thought possible. Somehow it works to settle Tyler, that look. 

“Eh. Only a little.” Tyler smiles and Jamie rolls his eyes and laughs, a low sound, warm and—dorky. Jesus Christ. 

Without warning, Jamie dunks under water quickly and he’s back up before Tyler has time to wonder what he’s doing or where he’s going. He shakes the water out of his eyes, hair flipping side to side and he uses his hands to slick it in a move Tyler has seen thousands of times by surfers and swimmers when they come out of the ocean. It’s… weird. And hot. And so human-like.

“What are those?” Jamie asks, blinking a few times to dislodge the droplets clinging to his eyelashes and tilting his chin toward Tyler’s arm. 

“Oh, these?” Tyler stretches his right arm so Jamie can see it better. “Tattoos. Sick, eh?”

“Can I—?” Jamie reaches out. His hand is so, so wide.

“Sure.”

Jamie traces the ink on Tyler’s arm, and Tyler shivers under the touch. He’s so—careful with it, cool fingers nice and gentle on Tyler’s still sun-warm skin. Drops of water slide over his arm, tickling, and he has to pinch his lips together to stop his giggle. 

“They’re in your skin,” Jamie says.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, whispering for no reason. He can’t look away from the focused look on Jamie’s face. “You like them?”

Jamie flashes a smile, a fast sharp grin that has Tyler smiling too. “I do.”

Tyler scoots closer on the platform so Jamie can reach the pictures on his shoulder, arm extended all along Jamie’s. He grabs at Jamie’s shoulder muscles to steady himself, hard and solid in his palm. Fuck, but he could probably break a man in half, or something.

“Dude, how did they even get you?”

Jamie snaps his hand away, lowering himself in the water. He looks to the side and down, sharp teeth scratching at his lip. The angle allows Tyler to see his gills, too, small and hidden behind his ears. 

Tyler’s not sure, but he thinks Jamie looks ashamed, so he says, “Hey no, it’s cool, man. Don’t worry. It’s none of my business.”

They stay silent, and Tyler watches as Jamie takes a deep shuddering breath and looks back up at him, hand coming up to poke at Tyler’s wrist.

“I don’t want to be here,” Jamie says, voice rough, fearful and angry all at once. He looks around and is so obviously fucking disgusted and disdainful for it all—fuck, Tyler laughs, because yeah. _Yeah_.

“No shit. No one would.”

And, like, he’ll be honest, Tyler’s felt trapped before in this town. He goes to work at the fake tattoo stand on Pearl’s Pier, spends his days sticking temporary pictures on the sunburnt skin of tourists, then gets drunk with the guys, watches porn at the Pelican, fucks some people. Rinse and repeat. Day in, day out. Going fucking nowhere. Sometimes he looks at the ocean, feeling tiny and meaningless. There’s never gonna be anything more than this—this shit town, and this shit job, and this complacent life he doesn’t know how to turn around. He keeps thinking he will, but then Out-To-Sea does what it does and it’s another morning at the pier and another night getting shitfaced. Sometimes it feels like that, anyway.

It must be ten times worse for Jamie. Maybe. Tyler’s captivity isn’t a real one. Well, not _exactly_. Not like having the whole ocean and then—

Fuck.

“You have humans down there?” he asks, swinging his arm back and forth, stupidly hoping Jamie might want to touch it again, or maybe to show him he’s not scared. Fuck, he doesn’t know. “Jumping into hoops, making all the sea folk laugh?”

Jamie huffs. “No,” he says, dragging the word out and getting closer, raising himself up with his tail so he’s staring straight at Tyler, smiling. “We just drag them under, drown them, and eat their flesh.” So fucking matter of fact.

“Do you?” Tyler says, smiling, not even scared. And maybe he’s being super dumb, but whatever, he’s got a good feeling about this.

“Mmmhmm.” Jamie raises an eyebrow, jaw working, and Tyler has the distinct impression he’s being laughed at again. He doesn’t mind.

Jesus fucking Christ, he’s flirting with a merman.

“Huh. I thought you were shy. How come you don’t hate me?”

Jamie shrugs. “You make it easy.”

“Don’t think I’m the easy one here.”

Sooooo, okay. _Okay_. Tyler’s a reckless, impulsive, insert-your-Carpe-Diem-allegory-here kind of guy, he knows that. And he figures, since he’s about to do something _immensely_ reckless tonight, he might as well go all-in, right? Go big or go home. This is the best thing that’s happened to him in ages.

“Hey, Jamie,” he says, scooting forward even more. “Ever kissed a human?”

Jamie gives a bark of a laugh that bounces over the water and up into the night. “Ever kissed a seaman, Tyler?”

“Nah, man. But I’d like to give it a shot.”

Jamie laughs as he gets closer, putting his hand on Tyler’s shoulder to raise himself up, and Tyler grabs at his arm, hooks his ankle around one of the railing bars, tightening his other hand on the edge of the deck so he doesn’t fall forward into the tank. 

“Careful with the teeth, dude,” he whispers.

“I could drag you down and eat you up,” Jamie says, lips close to Tyler’s, clacking his teeth together, but there’s no threat in it, and his mouth quirks a little, sweet and quick.

Fuck Drypool. Fuck Out-To-Sea. And fuck that TV guy with his boner and his cameras and his lies.

Jamie’s skin is wet and soft, and his muscles are hard, and he’s alive and _real_ and so new under Tyler’s hand.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, smiling. This close, Jamie smells of salt and algae and a faint strange mix of seafood and fish that doesn’t even turn Tyler off for one second. He darts his tongue out to lick fast at Jamie’s wet upper lip. “You could, yeah. But then, who would break your sorry tail out of this shithole?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ AND THEN YOU CAN IMAGINE TYLER SAVING JAMIE FREE WILLY STYLE. And Tyler will raise his hand standing on the reef or some shit, all SWIM JAMIE JUMP JAMIE, and Jamie will. He’ll jump high over Tyler’s raised hand, black silhouette against the rising sun, and straight into the ocean. And then they’ll probably find a private cove to make out and Brownie will be like NO ONE WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR WEIRD INTERSPECIES SEX LIFE TYLER OMG TAKE THIS SHOT AND DRINK THIS BEER AND SHUT UP ]


End file.
